I've done that, and I usually get a lot of results. A lot of them look like "Fledgling", new magazines, and etc. I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions. I know that not all ones labeled fledgling are bad but I still have to be careful in sending something there I think.
I would worry less about
fledgling vs.
non-fledgling than I would about
non-paying fledgling vs. anything else.
The biggest disadvantage to fledgling magazines is that the sample size you can take to get a sense of what they publish is small/non-existent. But the best way to find markets for your stories, as others have said, is to search duotrope, see what comes up, and pick up/download issues and READ. None of us here have read your work (as far as I know) and editor's tastes are typically very hard to pigeonhole in a way you can verbalize to someone else, because they tend to be much more complex than just liking a certain type of story -- there's subtle stylistic things, small details in character or settings, compatible sense of humor, etc. So, everyone is giving you the best advice there is, it's just not the easiest advice.
If you post in SYW, or you have a Beta who is more experienced, they may also be able to suggest target markets for a given work, but that's not their primary purpose.
What fantasy pubs/mags do you read that feature stories of this length?
If the answer is "none", I suggest hitting up your local bookstore in the name of research (or check . If you want to publish, it pays to know the market.
This is absolutely true. It's no coincidence that the two magazines I enjoy reading the most have also bought stories from me. (They've also rejected stories by me, but I don't hold that against them.)
a) As for on here: I haven't really seen anything in Paying Markets that I either want to write for. It could be that I'm not looking hard enough but I don't know.
Write the story first, and make it the best you can. *Then* figure out where you want to send it. Each of your stories will be enough different (or should be, anyway) that the considerations are going to be a little different too. Again, that's where knowing your markets comes in really handy.
Most of the Fantasy publishers that I know of (Carina Press, Lyrical Press, Entangled Publishing) want 15K - 20K starting depending on who you're dealing with. I'm just not confident in myself enough to know that I can write that much yet. Maybe at some point, but not now though.
If you haven't had a 20k story in you wanting to be told, that's why you haven't written one. Not everyone writes novels, and there are more than a handful of people on AW who write exclusively flash and do quite well at it.
I'm sure there are people who will strongly disagree with me on this, but IMHO, the best stories tend to be the ones that are driving the creativity car, if you know what I mean. If you start off saying, "I want to write a 2500 word story with a young PoC female character exploring themes of subjective perceptions of consent", you're not going to have the same magic as when you sit down at the keyboard and suddenly think, "Ooooh! Secret hippopotamus society! Set in a disco!" Part of creativity is letting go of control, then fighting for it back again during revision.
b) In Books : For fantasy, most of the books I get have a way higher word count than what I listed, and nine times out of ten, they are with a Big Six Publisher/Imprint.
Well, yes. Book publishers tend to want books. If you don't write them, why are you worrying about it? And when and if you do, why NOT shoot for one of the Big Six? Or the top markets for shorts? So you get some rejections. Meh, whatever. You work your way down from the top, and where you land gives you concrete information on where you are. And then you work on landing higher the next time.
I really wouldn't have such a problem with word count if I actually believed I could write that much, but I don't know if I can. I have yet to write anything that's 20K. I can't even bare to wrap my head around 90K+.
So don't until you're ready. Writing novels and writing shorts are like knowing tennis and knowing badminton. There are skills that come in handy across both, but they are different games. Being a novel writer doesn't automatically make you a higher class of writer than being a short story writer, or a poet, or anything else. Embrace your natural writing length and work on mastering it. Other lengths, styles, genres, you name it, will find a way to creep in there when they're ready for you.
Now, as far as how "safe" a market is, if they're a print pub and they are skeezy, that'll show up with googling because we writers are good at complaining about unfairness. If they're electronic, and their site is purple with yellow blinking text and background music, they're bad. Otherwise: do they *look* professional? Do they pay? Are there complaints from their authors? Keep up with Writer Beware (they tweet!) and maybe spend time on the Short Story or W1S1 rejectomancy boards, because there's a lot of info there about how writers are being treated. Start thinking about researching the market for a given story as being a lot like researching the details IN your story, except unlike the latter, market research gets easier the longer and better you work on it.